Last week we ran a webinar that reflected on the chaotic landscape facing telecoms vendors. We were joined by serial telecoms vendor executive, Mary Clark, and looked at the unprecedented disruption vendors’ primary buyer, the telecoms operator, has experienced over the past few years.
In truth, the disruption started the moment digital service providers starting encroaching on telecoms turf. Five years or so ago, we were preoccupied with ‘OTT providers’ cannibalizing operator revenues guided by their ‘internet business models’. This started an introspective process by operators that quickly exposed their digital inadequacies (massive simplification) and emphatically demonstrated their need to transform.
Digital transformation programs have been underway with most global telcos for the last 2-3 years. Some are further ahead than others on their journeys. It’s taking time because it represents complete wholesale change for operators—new technologies, new network architectures, new people, new culture: they’re facing completely new realities.
But digital transformation is just one major event that operators are currently contemplating. They’re also juggling with the complexities of 5G deployment, current economic uncertainty and practical limitations brought on by a global pandemic and rising political tensions thanks to the U.S. trade war with China.
We already know that operator digital transformation programs were lengthening vendor sales cycles and making them more involved. 5G and COVD-19 have made an already difficult environment even more challenging. The reality today is that vendors must interface and engage more people within an operator organisation when making a sale, must endure a longer wait and show greater patience and empathy than ever before.
The good news is that we have managed to pinpoint the qualities operators look for in vendors when forming RFP shortlists. We also know which marketing channels they find most influential when tracking the vendor community. Armed with this information, vendors have all they need to build strategic marketing communications campaigns, focused on maximising the value of these channels to get ahead of the competition and get selling.
The webinar recording, containing all these valuable insights, is available here. If you’re a vendor marketeer trying to build campaigns, but keep being met with obstacles, then let us know. We’re offering you a one-hour brainstorming session to help suggest solutions and get you moving.
Communications Management